12/29/13

Happy Sunday, I hope you are enjoying the holidays. I had a wonderful Christmas. As it is our tradition we spend Christmas Eve with our extended family. Then my husband and I spend Christmas day at home watching movies and relaxing. And this year was not the exception; we watched all the movies we had been 'saving up', and ate way too much popcorn and candy. But this year I added something new to our tradition: a new quilt to snuggle under while watching our movies. As you might remember I started working on my Christmas quilt at the beginning of December (you can read more about it here). I wasn't sure I was going to able to finish it. The piecing is very simple and the quilt top came together in no time, but the quilting is another story. I decided to quilt it with straight lines about 3/4" apart. The quilting was slowly progressing when my machine decided to act up (now I need to take it in for service). Luckily I have another machine: a vintage Kenmore that a friend gave a while back and I had never used. Well, the little machine came through: it sews beautifully and I finished my quilt in time.

I'm so happy with how this quilt turned up. I love the random patchwork. If feels very homemade and the flannel backing feels so warm and cozy. It has quickly become a family favorite.

12/8/13

With all the things I have to do this month I decided to add one more to my list. I decided to start a new quilt. I've been admiring Ana Maria Horner's Feather Quilt for quite some time. It is aboslutely fabulous. However, as much as I love the original design I'm not going to do a whole feather quilt. I'm just making a few blocks to use as accents for a simple patchwork quilt. The plan is to have it finished for Christmas. We have a tradition of spending Christmas Day watching movies all day and I thought it would be nice to have a new quilt to snuggle under. Maybe this will be the start of a new tradition: A new quilt for Christmas every year...
I hope you are having a lovely week!

12/1/13

Hello everyone! I hope you had a lovely weekend. And for all of you in the US happy belated Thanksgiving. Now that Thanksgiving is over, it is time to start getting ready for Christmas.

Last week I finished this table runner. I actually started it last year hopping to finish it in time for the holidays. But sadly that didn't happen so I put it away and forgot about it for most of this year. Until last month. I picked it up again and decided to finally finish it and put it to use. Now I'm glad I 'waited' to finish it. Last year I had planned to leave all the negative space around the stars un-quilted, except for the hand quilting around the stars. However, that turned out to be a bit of a problem. It looked puffy as if the layers needed to be secured better. So I decided to quilt all that negative space with a pebble pattern; something I would never had tried last year (I was terrified of free motion quilting). It feels really good to finally check this project of my list.